Roadway completes first phase of Little Bay bridge project

Friday

NEWINGTON — A new concrete roadway now spans the Little Bay channel between Newington and Dover.

NEWINGTON — A new concrete roadway now spans the Little Bay channel between Newington and Dover.

No cars travel the span just yet, but the roadway marks the completion of an important phase of the massive Little Bay Bridges/Spaulding Turnpike improvement project, according to state Department of Transportation engineer Adam Chestnut.

"It's a huge portion of phase one being completed," said Chestnut, the state engineer in charge of the contract to construct a new $50 million four-lane bridge over the Little Bay channel.

Once completed in 2018, the $207 million Spaulding Turnpike project will have eight lanes of travel between Exit 1 in Newington and Exit 6 in a Dover over a new bridge and renovated bridge over Little Bay.

With the pouring and curing of about 1,200 cubic yards of concrete over the past several weeks, the bridge work is now halfway complete with two lanes. Its completion sets the stage for the construction of another span with another two lanes.

"What you see out there for the concrete bridge deck is exactly half of what you will see," Chestnut said. "The deck will be twice as wide as it currently is. We definitely have gotten over a big hurdle getting that first phase completed. It gives us a lot easier access from the north to south side and gives us a good work platform" to finish the bridge.

Chestnut said construction crews will use the new deck as the staging platform to erect the steel and other components of the next half of the new bridge.

As concrete support columns for the new span are put into the swift-moving channel, the existing wooden trestle at water level will come out. Currently, there is a 200-foot channel under the bridge for boat navigation.

"Our ability to get out of the water is a big step," he said, adding that by the time next year's boating season comes around, the trestle should be pretty much out of the way.

The four lanes of the new Little Bay Bridge will combine with the four lanes of the existing bridge to ultimately create eight lanes of traffic over the water.

Come winter, according to Chestnut, motorists on the existing bridge will see the cranes on the new span lifting steel into place.

Meanwhile, work continues on new southbound and northbound approaches to the new span. The roadway is already taking shape on the Dover side, and work is now starting in earnest to prepare for the approach on the Newington side, according to Chestnut.

Eventually, in order for the widening of the Spaulding Turnpike to occur, traffic must shift onto the new bridge.

"There are some phases of the Newington project that have to happen in order to shift traffic onto this new bridge," he said. "I expect 2015, potentially, before actual traffic goes out onto this bridge."

The work on the turnpike will require what Chestnut calls "intricate traffic manipulation." The NHDOT has committed to keeping two lanes of traffic in each direction open during all phases of construction, but traffic will ultimately be impacted by temporary routing around the work crews.

Chestnut said the state will use "smart work zone" technology, as it did during work on the upper stretch of the Spaulding Turnpike in Rochester, using updatable signs to warn motorists how long delays are ahead of them.

Once his oversight of the new bridge is done, Chestnut expects his emphasis to shift to overseeing other contracts that are part of the overall project: Contract O to do the extensive renovations of the existing Little Bay Bridge and Contract Q to rebuild Exit 6.

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